Main
Sunny Shao
Education
PhD. Candidate, Political Science
University of California
Riverside, CA
current - 2016
- MASS BEHAVIOR & COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE
- Dissertation: How Mainstream Media Shapes Political Sentiment on WeChat? Understanding Political Moblization Through Social Media Discourse
Applied Machine Learning Workshop
Rstudio
San Francisco, CA
2020
M.S., Public Policy (Econometrics)
Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA
2015 - 2013
Selected Experience
Associate Researcher
Center for Social Innovation (UCR)
Riverside, CA
current - 2018
- Effectively communicate technical concepts and findings to non-technical audiences such funders, journalists and government agencies
- Independently query, analyze, and visualize both structured and unstructured datasets (with R and python) to measure social disparity and impacts for clients’ grant application or annual reports.
- Design and deploy interactive data visualization tools using R, shiny, ArcGIS, and AWS for government agencies and organizations that help them to strategize their projects or resource allocations.
Lead Researcher
AAPI Data
Riverside, CA
current - 2017
- Classify voter file data using surname and geography match algorithms to assign survey experiments
- Program, analyze, and visualize the largest Asian American Survey projects (2018 National Asian American Survey and 2018-2020 National Asian American Voter Survey)
- Proficient in various data manipulation, survey weight raking, visualization, and GIS analysis packages in R and Python
Summer Fellow (Survey Data Operation)
Education Pioneer
Los Angeles, CA
2016
- Worked closely with coordinators, principals and teachers on program evaluations
- Created stratified weighted sampling surveys to evaluate programs of Camino Nuevo charter school network
- Designed protocols and methodology for future program evaluations
Data Analyst Intern
SmartAnalyst
Gurgaon, India
2012
- Interviewed thoracic oncologists in Japan and China for pharmaceutical clients, who are on phase II trials of non-small cell lung cancer drugs
- Translated three-way phone meetings between client, SmartAnalyst and Chinese thoracic oncologists
- Crowdsourced a list of thoracic oncologists through medical journals
Selected Projects
Asian American Voter Survey (Experimental Design & Name-match algorithms)
AAPI Data, APIAVote & AAAJC
N/A
2020 - 2018
Experiment on Inland Empire Census 2020 Outreach Messages by Census Tracts
Center for Social Innovation, UC Riverside
Riverside, CA
2020
National Asian American Survey
AAPI Data
N/A
2018
Selected Reports
Reaching Low-Propensity Voters in California’s November 2020 Elections: Recommendations from focus group research and community partner engagement
California Common Cause
N/A
2020
Untapped Power: The Strength of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Working People
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
N/A
2019
Selected Press
Would Prop. 16’s affirmative action ensure equality in California
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, CA
2020
Invited Talk
2020 Census and Beyond: New Tool for AAPI Census Efforts
Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy
Virtual
2019
Key Patterns and Trends Among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: Chinese American Demographics & Political Engagement
National Conference of State Legislators
Los Angeles, CA
2018
Resources for Engaging in the Debate Over Data Disaggregation
Association of Asian American Studies
San Francisco, CA
2018